Chapter 128: Human Greed

Chapter 128: Chapter 128: Human Greed

Several days passed after the night of Pronoia’s vision.

Her mother had hoped that what had happened that night would remain between them. She had held onto that hope like a drowning woman clutching driftwood, her fingers curled around it so tightly that her knuckles ached and the skin of her palms grew raw from the imagined pressure.

Night after night she had lain awake beside her husband, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing, and in those dark hours she had repeated the same silent prayer: that he would understand the danger surrounding their daughter and would see the terror in Pronoia’s sightless eyes and recognize it as a warning rather than an opportunity. She had hoped he would remain silent and had hoped the weight of what they had witnessed would settle into the quiet spaces between them and stay there, unspoken, protected by the thin walls of their house and the thinner walls of their poverty.

But those hopes were soon shattered.

The morning had begun like any other. The sun had risen pale and indifferent over the village, casting thin light through the cracks in their walls, the same pale light that had filtered in every dawn for as long as her mother could remember. Dust motes drifted in the weak beams, turning slowly, almost lazily, as if time itself moved more slowly inside this small room than it did outside. Pronoia had been sitting near the hearth, her thin legs folded beneath her, her fingers tracing patterns in the dust on the floor. The patterns were careful, deliberate—circles within circles, lines that never quite met, shapes that only she could read. Her white blindfold caught the weak glow and held it, so that for a moment the cloth seemed almost luminous against the shadows of her face.

Her mother had been mending a torn shirt, the needle moving through the fabric with the practiced rhythm of years. Each stitch was small and even, a quiet defiance against the constant fraying of their lives. The air smelled of woodsmoke and poverty: the sharp, acrid scent of last night’s fire still clinging to the rafters, mixed with the duller, heavier smell of unwashed cloth and damp earth that never quite left the corners of the house.

Then the voices came.

They started as a murmur, distant and indistinct, like the buzzing of flies around something dead. At first her mother thought she had imagined it—an echo of the anxiety that had lived under her skin since the night of the vision. But the sound grew, thickening, resolving itself into human tones. Pronoia’s mother paused, her needle suspended mid-stitch. A single drop of blood welled where the point of the needle had pressed too hard against her thumb, but she did not notice. Her head lifted. And her nostrils flared, as if she might smell the danger the way an animal smells a predator on the wind.

Then came a knock.

Her mother froze. The needle slipped from her fingers and clattered against the floor. The sound was small, insignificant, but it echoed through the tiny house like a death knell. The metal struck the packed earth once, twice, then laid still, yet the silence that followed seemed louder than the impact itself. Pronoia’s fingers stopped their tracing. The blindfolded girl tilted her head slightly, listening with the acute attention of someone who had never known sight and therefore lived entirely through sound and touch and the subtle shifts of air.

Another knock followed.

Then another.

Before she could respond, several people began calling from outside. Their voices pressed against the walls, hungry and desperate and utterly without shame. The words came in overlapping waves, some shouted, some almost whispered, all of them carrying the same raw need.

"We heard about the girl!"

"Let her see our future too!"

"We need her help!"

Pronoia’s mother stared toward the door. Her heart sank. The organ seemed to drop through her chest and her stomach, then the floor itself, leaving behind a hollow space that filled with cold, creeping dread. The dread was familiar; it had lived with her since the night her daughter’s eyes had rolled back and the vision had taken her. But this new form of it was sharper, more immediate. It had teeth.

How did they find out?

The question was pointless, as she already knew the answer. She had known it the moment she heard the first voice. The knowledge sat in her stomach like a stone she had swallowed years ago and only now felt the full weight of. But knowing didn’t make it easier. Neither did it stop the world from crumbling around her. The thin walls of the house, the pale light, the smell of smoke—everything that had seemed ordinary only moments before now felt fragile, temporary and already half-destroyed.

She quickly moved toward the entrance. Her legs felt strange beneath her—too heavy and too light at the same time, as though they belonged to someone else. Someone who hadn’t just lost everything. Each step across the packed-earth floor seemed to take longer than the last. The air thickened and the voices outside grew clearer, more insistent. She could hear the scrape of feet on the path, the low murmur of people speaking among themselves, the higher, thinner cry of a child somewhere in the gathering crowd.

When she opened the door, she found several men and women standing outside. More people were gathered behind them, a crowd that stretched back toward the center of the village. Some looked desperate—their faces gaunt and their eyes hollow with hunger and fear.

The skin of their cheeks was tight over the bones; their lips were cracked. Others looked excited—their cheeks flushed and their hands gesturing eagerly, as though they had found salvation after a long and bitter search. A few stood silent, watching, their expressions unreadable. The morning light fell across the group in the same pale, indifferent way it had fallen across the floor inside the house, illuminating the wear on their clothes, the dirt under their nails, the hope and the hunger that lived side by side in their faces.

"Please," one of them said. A woman with gray-streaked hair and a voice that cracked on the word. The woman’s hands were clasped in front of her, the knuckles white. "We heard your daughter can see the future."

Another person stepped forward. A man this time, younger, with the lean look of someone who had been hungry for too long. His shirt hung loosely on his frame; the bones of his wrists stood out sharply. "We need her to look into our future."

"Please let us speak with her."

The requests came one after another, overlapping, each voice carrying its own particular shade of urgency. Some spoke of sick children, of failing crops, of debts that could no longer be paid. Others simply repeated the same phrases, as if the words themselves might open the door wider.

Pronoia’s mother stood in front of the doorway. Her body blocked the entrance, but she knew it was a futile gesture. She was one woman against a village. One mother against the weight of desperation. The wood of the doorframe pressed into her shoulder; she leaned against it as if the solid feel of it might lend her strength she did not possess.

"What are you talking about?"

She tried to keep her voice steady, to sound confused rather than terrified. Tried to pretend that this was all a misunderstanding, a rumor that had somehow grown out of nothing. The effort made her throat tight. She could feel Pronoia behind her, still seated near the hearth, still and listening.

"My daughter doesn’t have such ability."

One of the people frowned. A man with a face like worn leather and eyes that had seen too much. The lines around his mouth deepened. "We were told she does."

"Who told you?" Pronoia’s mother asked.

The group became quiet and the silence was answer enough as it stretched between them, heavy and accusing. Somewhere farther back in the crowd a child whimpered and was quickly hushed. A dog barked once in the distance and then fell silent. The pale sunlight continued its slow crawl across the ground.

Her mother looked from one person to another, searching their faces for something—guilt, perhaps, or shame—but she found neither. What she found instead was a kind of collective resolve, the stubborn determination of people who had already decided that the risk of speaking was smaller than the risk of remaining silent and hungry and afraid.

"Who told you?" she asked again.

One of them looked away. A young woman with a child on her hip, the child’s face pale and thin. The woman’s eyes flicked toward the ground, then toward the faces of those nearest her, as if seeking permission or protection.

"I can’t say."

"Why?" Pronoia’s mother demanded. The word came out sharper than she intended. She could feel the cold dread spreading, filling the hollow place where her heart had been.

"The person who told us strictly warned us not to reveal who they were," said a woman from the back. The voice was carefully, measured, as though the speaker had rehearsed the sentence.

Her mother’s heart began beating faster. The blood rushed through her ears, drowning out the sounds of the crowd, the sounds of the village, and everything except the terrible certainty that was taking root in her chest. She knew something had gone terribly wrong. The knowledge was not new; it had been waiting for this moment, patient as a spider in the corner of a dark room but now it moved.

She looked toward another person. A man this time, older, with the bent back of someone who had spent a lifetime working fields that never gave enough. The man’s hands were large and calloused; they hung at his sides as if he did not know what to do with them.

"Tell me."

The person remained silent. His gaze stayed fixed on a point somewhere past her shoulder, as if the doorway itself held more interest than the woman standing in it.

Her mother quickly reached inside and brought out something of value—a small silver ring, the only thing of worth she owned, a gift from her own mother on the day she had married. It had been in her family for generations and was the last link to a past that had not been entirely terrible. The metal was cool against her palm. She had worn it only on the rarest of occasions; most days it stayed hidden in a scrap of cloth beneath the straw mattress as a private reminder that there had once been something better than this. Now she held it out, the only currency she had left that might purchase the truth.

She offered it to one of the people. The metal caught the pale morning light and gleamed. For a moment the ring seemed almost bright enough to hurt the eyes, a small, cold star in the dull morning.

"Please. Tell me who told you."

The person hesitated. His eyes flickered toward the ring, then toward the others, and back toward the ring. Greed warred with caution on his face—a battle that lasted only seconds. The muscles of his jaw tightened. His fingers twitched once at his side. Around him the crowd seemed to lean in, though no one actually moved. The air itself felt tighter.

Then greed overcame caution.

"It was.....